


His World a Little Colder

by Semira



Series: While You Were Sleeping [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brother Feels, Canon Temporary Character Death, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Sam Winchester, Introspection, POV Sam Winchester, Self-Hatred, Spoilers for Episode: s09e23 Do You Believe in Miracles?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3208103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semira/pseuds/Semira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time in a long time, Sam drives the Impala.</p><p>For the first time—well, the first time Sam can really remember since the night the semi-truck hit them—Dean is in the back seat.</p><p>Not for the first time, Dean is dead. </p><p>In other words: <em>I wasn't happy with the resolution we got for the season 9 finale.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	His World a Little Colder

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently I'm in it for the long haul. This story wanted to turn into a series. If you have any ideas or prompts for moments when the brothers secretly care for each other without the other necessarily knowing, **feel free to feed them to me**.

For the first time in a long time, Sam drives the Impala.

For the first time—well, the first time Sam can really remember since the night the semi-truck hit them—Dean is in the back seat.

Not for the first time, Dean is dead. Again. Some more. A sound that wants to be a hysterical laugh grinds its way through tight vocal cords, pushing out with a sob, and Sam rubs his face. He always asked Dean to trust him, to acknowledge him as an equal rather than a liability. How stupid.

Some part of him knows why Dean didn't. He doesn't deserve it. He doesn't _get_ to be equal because he’s not. He never has been. Dean is the only one who’s ever been able to make him okay. When Dean’s there, he’s not the would-have-been boy king of Hell or Kevin’s murderer or the one who let Lucifer free or the one who let Dean down over and over and fucking over. 

Sometimes, everything is okay. Sometimes they’re sprawled on the couch in the bunker fighting over who gets to take up the extra cushion (Dean, because he’s older and because he can kick Sam’s ass and because Sam feels, sometimes, like giving up little things might be some sort of absolution for the big things, a little blur over the ink of his sins) and Sam can forget. Maybe not forget. He can’t ever really forget something like almost ending the world.

But then Dean will try to steal all the popcorn or he’ll put his feet in Sam’s lap and give that patented ate-the-canary smirk, and everything will be okay, because this is _it_. This is what he is, what they are. It’s what makes him Sam Winchester. Sometimes he feels like crying at times like those, because even after all this shit, they still have it. And Sam will offer some half-assed resistance because if he doesn't, he’d be going too close to chick-flick territory, and then Dean might ask if he’s okay and he’ll have to say he’s fine. What else is there to say, really? The Winchesters aren't good at hearing the truth, and certainly not at telling it. So he’ll push at Dean’s feet or swipe at the popcorn, and Dean’s smirk will simmer down to the pleased old smile. And Sam will smile, too, because that look on Dean’s face is always a reward. He’ll do almost anything to get it.

Dean won’t make that expression anymore.

Dean is dead.

Sam can see it whenever he looks in the rearview mirror—the wounds on Dean’s face not bleeding; his chest a mess of drying blood where Metatron drove the blade in; the waxy cast of his flesh. Death is nothing like sleep. The people who say it is are full of shit. Death is a stillness too complete. In sleep, a flush lies over the cheekbones, the chest rises and falls. Dean is limp and pliant, lying where he was left, too quiet and empty to house a soul.

So death and sleep share no similarities, really. Even so, Sam finds himself humming.

Dean would always sing the song to him when he was little, and a part of him associated it with that feeling—security, comfort, the warmth of Dean’s body next to him. He doesn’t remember, of course, but Dean told him that it was something their mom used to do for him. Sam doesn’t remember when Dean told him that. At this point, he may have imagined it. He’s good at imagining things.

 _Take a sad song and make it better…_

Dean, despite his rather awful singing voice, was always the better singer between the two of them, and whatever anyone could say about him, he had a memory like a hawk. He said Sam was smart, but he knew the lyrics, word-for-word, to hundreds and hundreds of songs, could sing them with his eyes closed.

Sam has gotten used to thinking of Dean in the past tense. It comes naturally now. Sam doesn't know many people who can say that.

Dean will be fine soon, though.

Sam’s humming turns into singing, his voice low and absolutely wrecked. Dean does this charming little thing when he cries—he just looks pretty and stoic and he leaks a few manly tears. Sam has never been that way. He _ugly_ cries. His face gets red and his throat clogs and there’s snot that drips down over his lips and chin and he’s just disgusting, really. And there’s always a mother of a headache waiting for him afterward. 

He whispers—who is he kidding?— _whimpers_ the lyrics until he gets to, “You're waiting for someone to perform with, and don't you know that it's just you,” and then he can’t keep it up anymore. He starts crying again, and it’s all he can do to wipe his face on his blood-streaked jacket to keep them from rolling off into a ditch because he can’t see straight.

When they get to the bunker, Sam shuts down for a bit. He doesn't haul Dean out and do the thing he should be doing. He crawls into the back seat with Dean and leans up against him. Dean’s skin is lukewarm, nowhere near life-temperature, but he’s not too cold that Sam can’t pretend.

He doesn't know how much time passes like that, but he hauls his knees up to his chest and pulls Dean against him. Soon, he’ll take Dean inside and clean his body and do what he should do, what he should have done.

( _I lied._ )

Maybe not. At some point, he was sure it had been the truth. A Dean who was alive was a Dean who had to pursue the mission, fight the good fight. A Dean living is a Dean who will never, ever rest. 

So if Dean died again—yeah. Sam told himself he’d let him be. Let him rest. He deserves that.

Sam’s not that strong. He can live without his brother—Amelia proved that, and he was more or less alive the entire time, but it wasn't the same.

So Sam won’t just let Dean rest, especially not now, when he’s not entirely sure where Dean’s soul was taken. But he has time. Dean grows cool against him.

For now, he closes his eyes against a new rush of hot tears and hums under his breath and murmurs, “Dean,” into his brother’s shoulder.


End file.
